Steve Cassady
CAREER SUMMARY
Experienced financial and operations management executive with 27 years leadership in problem-solving, changing, and improving the business through sophisticated financial and investment analysis, technical understanding of operations, and quality tools in both a mature and entrepreneurial companies in cross-functional environments. Areas of expertise include:
• Strategic Planning
• Operational and Financial Management
• Corporate Mergers, Acquisitions, & Divestitures
• Activity Based Management & Costing
• Financial Planning, Forecasting, and Budgeting
• Operations and Financial Results Analysis
• Pricing Strategy and Customer Specific Pricing
• Operations Support Management
• Business Process Improvement
• Business Case Analysis
• Cross-Functional Team Leadership
• Entrepreneurial leadership
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
CASSADY CONSULTING, Overland Park, KS 2004 - Current
Operate my own consulting company providing Strategic, Financial, Managerial, and Operations consulting services to over 85 small and medium businesses. Showed businesses how to become more profitable and developed business plans to secure financing and managed staff executives for George S. May Company and Intelli-think. Consulted a wide range or industries in 36 states including: Transportation, Manufacturing, Contractors, Real Estate, Restaurants, Graphic Art Firms, Car Dealerships, Advertising, and Telecommunications companies. Developed and rolled out key performance indicators to track and act on performance while deploying and training on lean six sigma techniques. Managed the construction of a 60 unit five story senior housing project and operated a property management company on an interim basis.
SPRINT/SPRINT PCS/UNITED TELECOM, Greater Kansas City Area 1982-2003
Director Receivables Management Operations Support and Finance (2003)
- Met market needs and budget cost reduction objectives of $30 million by transitioning corporate and divisional strategies into departmental tactical plan and making processes SOX compliant.
- Reduced planned operating spending by 25% within 3 years by deploying business process improvement tools and improved quality assessment process to identify process changes.
- Integrated techniques and work systems to drive continuous process improvements.
- Reorganized 85-person department to better meet the company’s transformation from product centric to customer centric organizational design.
PCS Director Billing and Credit Policy Finance (2002-2003)
- Proactively identified opportunity to refine acquisition credit strategy and analysis. This significantly improved churn and economic performance. Convinced Executive Management that churn improvement would more than offset the impact of fewer customer additions. Reduced downstream operating and customer acquisition expense by over $100 million through this acquisition strategy change.
- Devised new statistical analysis that strengthened trend analysis, forecast accuracy, and improved understanding of economics relating to voluntary and involuntary churn issues. Involuntary churn was improved by over 50%.
- Developed the framework to assess credit risk from an economic perspective
PCS Director Strategic Marketing and Base Management Finance (2001-2002)
- Changed spending mix to optimize margin improvements with a fixed operating and capital budget. Utilized statistical analysis from marketing database to refine customer targeting.
- Improved process to assess economic impact of customer loyalty and customer retention initiatives, improved financial controls, and utilized a testing environment to assess reasonableness of key drivers.
- Reduced Monthly forecast variances from over 50% to less than 3% by redesigning Operational Deployment and Financial tracking systems to insure linkage and to improve forecast accuracy.
PCS Director Customer Services Finance (1998-2001)
- Convinced Executive Management and corporate finance to ensure they understood the drivers for this increase in resources as the organization went from 3,000 to over 18,000 customer service representatives.
- Utilized benchmarking and competitive analysis to understand service operational and cost differences.
- Determined optimal mix of in-house and outsource staff and reassessed mix as environment changed.
- Saved over $50 million a year out of a $500 million operating budget by identifying the need to roll-out Activity Based Management to identify non-value added tasks and streamlines processes
- Restructured customer service representative’s compensation to include commissions/bonus.
PCS Director Product Development and Affiliate Finance (1997-1998)
- Provided recommendations on over 50 products that were expected to add substantially to revenue growth through economic analysis and operational readiness assessments.Evaluated the economics of the PCS Affiliate program that accelerated deployment of the wireless network
- Designed, communicated economics, and led executive presentations to Senior Management and Affiliate Senior Management teams on strategy and benefits to all parties.
PCS Director Financial Planning and Analysis (1995-1997)
- Facilitated discussions between cross-functional team and PCS executive management on 10 year business plan and near term operational plan.
- Convinced Senior Partner and investment community on soundness of business plan that secured $14 billion of financing and lead cross-functional team that created the business plan.
- Evaluated all major business decisions for Sprint PCS while it was in start-up entrepreneurial phase by formulating and justifying: Original pricing Strategy, Market Build out, Geographic Fill-in Strategy, Optimal long term network design ($3 billion annual capital expenditure), etc.
- Managed the construction process of the Sprint PCS headquarters build out at 4900 Main.
SPRINT LDD Director Operations Analysis (1991-1995)
- Successfully changed strategy of long distance division by assessing and communicating impact of product mix on division’s results and capital requirements and provided product line rationalization and lifecycle management economics. This integrated portfolio management into the divisions planning process.
- Created economic analysis guidelines and assessed over 100 product and acquisition opportunities
- Reviewed economics of major customer contracts and identified opportunities for pricing arbitrage.
- Designed and rolled out EVA (ROI) incentive compensation and methodologies to over 1000 managers.
- Directed two Quality Improvement Teams deploying TQM techniques and made financial processes more efficient.
Director Mergers and Acquisitions (1988-1991)
- Assessed over 100 acquisition opportunities resulting in several acquisitions including Centel.
- Selected Finance Representative on Strategic Review Challenge team that formed Sprint Strategic Options for the 1990’s which included the decision to focus on PCS licenses versus acquiring cellular companies.
- Lead corporate Finance to review the performance of US Sprint Partnership with GTE.
Manager Mergers and Acquisitions (1985-1988)
- Finance representative on team to assess economics of GTE and United Telecom combining long distance operations. Lead tactical finance representative on resolving partner issues.
- Participated on cross-functional team to develop GTE Sprint and US Telecom integration plan.
Financial Analyst Positions in Mergers and Acquisitions Department (1982-1985)
- Developed financial models, performed competitive analysis, analyzed, and researched a variety of acquisition/divestiture opportunities and evaluated internal divisional business plans.
Other: Adjunct Finance Professor at Rockhurst University for 3 classes, Taught 14 week Business Case Analysis Course to Sprint’s Financial Management Development Program Participants, and taught Finance class at Kauffman Foundation Fast Trac Class, and was a Junior Achievement Advisor for several years.
Education Computer Proficiency
Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, MBA – Finance and Marketing Word, PowerPoint, Project, Outlook,
Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, BS – General Management Excel, QuickBooks, & Internet Research
